209 réponses à ce sujet

[Therefore_I_Am]

www.youtube.com/watchBecause it's all part of the plan

[Heather Cline]

As the writer and producer J Michael Straczynski once said. The ships move at the speed of plot. All writers do this for books, games, movies, what have you. Take star trek for instance. How fast is warp 9 exactly? No one knows. Every episode it's different. Same for the show Babylon 5 going into hyperspace. How fast does a ship travel in it? Again no one really knows. It's technobabble created by the writers to advance the plot and development of the story.

Yes there are probably a lot of things Sovereign could have done differently, but it didn't. Sovereign did it the way it did and that's what happened. Same with how Harbinger tried to get the human race harvested to make another reaper. They were doing it the way they did it because it's how it's worked for them for thousands of years. Yes Shepard foiled their plots twice, now they are coming en mass and as such the plot for ME3 is set up.

[Smeelia]

candidate88766 wrote...

Gterror wrote...

For me my biggest plothole is how Shepard is walking in 90 degress angle in ME1 when he/she jumps out of the elevator and across the Citadel when Sovereign gets inside Citadel...

No idea, I just assumed some kind of magnetic boots. The real question would be why there would be such massive walkways on the Citadel Tower, but it was one of, if not the best set piece in the trilogy so far, so its excused.

They were walking up the lift (or lift shaft) outside of the artificial gravity generated on the Citadel.  I'm fairly sure they show that you're using magnetic boots.  Also, Geth that get knocked off their feet tend to float away (rather than fall down), indicating low gravity.

Exolyps wrote...

Smeelia wrote...

It'd be difficult to release a biological weapon or otherwise cause the Citadel to be evacuated (especially in the higher security areas) and even if you did succeed it might not help much since there'd be a lot of activity around the Citadel and tighter security to make sure only rescue ships get in.  The Conduit was a better option by far.

Actually, in Mass Effect Galaxy the Batarians almost manage to spread some **** on the Citadel. Could be related, or proff that it's almost possible?

It'd certainly be possible, difficult but still possible.  The main thing is that it wouldn't be any better a plan (infact it'd probably be worse) than the one they did use and investigating the Conduit also had it's own reasons for being important (figuring out the problem with the Citadel so that it could be prevented in the future).

Exolyps wrote...

And oh, I don't think there is much of plot holes out there. If you don't count the fact that a record of Sarens voice had him lose specter status in ME1 and you being able to fake a voice record in ME2. Makes you wonder why they where so easy to trust that recording, could easly been fake.

They probably had ways to verify that it was genuine, I don't remember when you use a fake voice in ME2 but it's possible that the security for that wasn't as strict (or didn't have as much time to check).  It's also not the only evidence against Saren, it just tips the balance (and it's the most solid piece of evidence).

Exolyps wrote...

And why not bring someone from the council to see the broken reaper ship?

There are whole other threads on proving the existence of Reapers but basically proving the existence of one doesn't prove the existence of others (and there are a lot of details that are difficult to prove and that even Shepard can't be sure of).

Exolyps wrote...

Besides that I'm just curious as to why ME2 happen. I've yet to make sense of it. Why did they create the baby? If it was to create a new reaper to open the citadel. Does that mean they didn't start "walking" until after the base was destroyed? In that case, how could they arrive so fast at Arival, or does Arival not play out until a year or so after?

I wonder if that will be better explained in the future.

I tend to think of it as being them trying to complete part of their main plan quietly (building a new Reaper with each extinction) since they will probably be having to attack in a more "noisy" fashion than usual and wont find it as easy to capture subjects for Reaper building.  I don't really think it's directly tied to the invasion plan (though having another Reaper around that can attack from elsewhere wouldn't hurt).  That's just speculation though, I'm not sure if we'll ever get a definitive answer.

[gunswordfist]

What? Sovereign was left behind after they wiped out the Protheans. I am sure he went through the Citadel Relay and that's how the other Reapers went back. His whole plan was to prepare for their takeover which he did by recruiting an army of Geth and then activate the Citadel Relay. I see no hole.

[KainrycKarr]

Bungie.Net Sucks wrote...

So I've been thinking not all that hard about Mass Effect, having watched the mind-raping, orgasmic E3 gameplay.

So I started thinking of the whole situation for a second, and I was like, "WTF? This makes no sense!"

What do I mean? I'll elaborate.

1 So, as established by the books & ME1, Sovreign was flying around the galaxy, collecting indoctrinated pawns to assault the Citadel.......... or whatever, for hundreds of years. But then I thought for a quarter of a second; "Wait, aren't the Reapers Billion-year old death gods, with advanced technology? Couldn't Sovreign just have the Reapers contacted, then tell them to hoof it over?"

You heard me; assuming Sovreign wasn't a dunce, he could've easily seized a communications relay, or sent the message himself, and alert the Reapers of the complications. 

This is a pretty reasonable goal I would think; after all, Harbinger was controlling the Collector General from the Galactic void, so it seems reasonable to send a brief message. Wait..... How did Harbinger wake up agai..........

"But it's too far to 'walk'!" I found myself thinking, but then I realized again; the Reapers were like 1 minute away from activating the Alpha Relay & pouring in during the Arrival DLC, so it would've not taken all that long apparently. Even with this, when did the Reapers start traveling towards the Milky Way? Like a moment after the Collector Base was destroyed? So I'm inclined to believe that it took them around........ a month or so to reach the Alpha Relay, give or take a few weeks/months, it's insignificant to death gods, who are said by Vigil to "Be very patient".

With all you've just read (In this thread made for educational purposes), do you think for a moment that the whole plot of Mass Effect makes any sense anymore? I mean really, call me out, I'd love to be wrong here, but it just seems like Sovreign dun goofed, it seems like he had no basic intelligence at all, and his motives seem odd.

And don't say "The Reapers were going towards the galaxy ever since Sovreign woke up!" that's BS; if that were true, why did Sovreign bother doing anything anyway?  Wouldn't it have made sense to wait a few hundred years (Short time for a death god) for his buddies then cluster-......."Pound" the Citadel forces?

"The novels explain everything!" 

No

The novels are pertient to the game's story, but having all this massively-convienient plot laziness covered up with an optional book & not the media of primary concern is rather absurd, and it's a poor excuse for such a disasterous conclusion.

So please tell me I'm wrong, I'd truly like to be, Mass Effect is my favourite series.



I ninja'd the plot

 

First bolded; because the rest of the reapers were out in darkspace, still in transit.

Second bolded; They were getting closer, still in transit. Arrival is meant to be a couple months after the end of ME2.

Summary; The Reapers believe in efficiency. Using Sovereign to destabilize the galaxy makes their job considerably easier, and weakens resistance. Activating the Citadel relay further streamlines the reaping, allowing them to jump straight to the heart of civilization, obliterating the leadership, and having access to every to a database on every known civilization.

Enter Shepard; whoops the hell out of Sovereign putting humanity in the spotlight, with a big red target in the process because the Reapers now view humanity as a threat/potential new Reaper.

Enter ME2 and Harbinger.  They want the one who poses a threat(Shepard) and his brethren(humanity) to be "assimilated" into a new Reaper.

Shepard does his his.

Enter Arrival; the Reapers have finally, after however long they'd been in transit in darkspace(assuming they've been coming since the events of ME1, we can assume at least 2-3 years). As a contingency plan they head towards the relay of Arrival which has access to *every* other relay, while not as convenient as the Citadel, nor as informative, and at this point resistance isn't as strong as it could be, nor is it as weak as they wanted.

Enter Shepard...again; does his thing.

Enter ME3; The Reapers have arrived the hard way, the galaxy is still relatively intact, including galactic government. Resistance is inevitable.


It's not a plothole at all. You people just haven't heard of tactics or contingency plans.

[goofyomnivore]

I find doing Virmire after Noveria more of a plot hole than this. I don't even believe this is a plot hole.

[the_one_54321]

Heather Cline wrote...
As the writer and producer J Michael Straczynski once said. The ships move at the speed of plot. All writers do this for books, games, movies, what have you. Take star trek for instance. How fast is warp 9 exactly? No one knows. Every episode it's different. Same for the show Babylon 5 going into hyperspace. How fast does a ship travel in it? Again no one really knows. It's technobabble created by the writers to advance the plot and development of the story.

And now all those franchises, including ME have been somewhat ruined for me. Thanks for that. If a story doesn't at least make internal sense, it's garbage.

[Kais Endac]

I haven't read all the posts but from what i understand the citadel is the heart of galactic civilization. It contains census data on every major species including their home planets and colonies. And I think i heard somewhere that the citadel acts as a control center for the relay network so if the reapers took control they could prevent travel between relays and effectively cut off systems from reinforcements.

It makes sense for them to attack the citadel first given these facts. The reapers are more advanced and numerous but an informed and combined military force might be able to stop them, if the leadership is eliminated and the relay network sealed however it makes the job that much easier for the reapers to harvest all galactic life.

If the signal sent to the citadel had worked or the near success of sovereign in gaining access to the relay control for darkspace the entire reaper fleet would have emerged and the harvest would have started.

Also when you have successfully done something right hundreds if not thousands of times would you consider any other alternatives. I dont think the failure of sovereign to send a signal or the entire reaper fleet to move towards the alpha relay to be a plot hole just the arrogance of a species that has purged the galaxy for millions of years.

Modifié par Kais Endac, 20 juin 2011 - 03:48 .

[MDT1]

KainrycKarr wrote...

First bolded; because the rest of the reapers were out in darkspace, still in transit.

Second bolded; They were getting closer, still in transit. Arrival is meant to be a couple months after the end of ME2.

Summary; The Reapers believe in efficiency. Using Sovereign to destabilize the galaxy makes their job considerably easier, and weakens resistance. Activating the Citadel relay further streamlines the reaping, allowing them to jump straight to the heart of civilization, obliterating the leadership, and having access to every to a database on every known civilization.

Enter Shepard; whoops the hell out of Sovereign putting humanity in the spotlight, with a big red target in the process because the Reapers now view humanity as a threat/potential new Reaper.

Enter ME2 and Harbinger.  They want the one who poses a threat(Shepard) and his brethren(humanity) to be "assimilated" into a new Reaper.

Shepard does his his.

Enter Arrival; the Reapers have finally, after however long they'd been in transit in darkspace(assuming they've been coming since the events of ME1, we can assume at least 2-3 years). As a contingency plan they head towards the relay of Arrival which has access to *every* other relay, while not as convenient as the Citadel, nor as informative, and at this point resistance isn't as strong as it could be, nor is it as weak as they wanted.

Enter Shepard...again; does his thing.

Enter ME3; The Reapers have arrived the hard way, the galaxy is still relatively intact, including galactic government. Resistance is inevitable.


It's not a plothole at all. You people just haven't heard of tactics or contingency plans.

This.

Its always the same with those plotholes.
Either people don't understand why someone did it this way.
Or after completing the book/game/film and having all available information about it they come up with a better plan.

Before posting a "new plothole" people should ask themselves at least following questions.

A) Couldn't he have another motive than the first explanation that came to my mind?
Did he have all the information I had after completing the game at the beginning of the game?

Also if I learned one thing from human history it's: If it doesn't make sense to me it still could happen.
But most people would also find plotholes in human history I guess.

Modifié par MDT1, 20 juin 2011 - 03:38 .

[Smeelia]

the_one_54321 wrote...

Heather Cline wrote...
As the writer and producer J Michael Straczynski once said. The ships move at the speed of plot. All writers do this for books, games, movies, what have you. Take star trek for instance. How fast is warp 9 exactly? No one knows. Every episode it's different. Same for the show Babylon 5 going into hyperspace. How fast does a ship travel in it? Again no one really knows. It's technobabble created by the writers to advance the plot and development of the story.

And now all those franchises, including ME have been somewhat ruined for me. Thanks for that. If a story doesn't at least make internal sense, it's garbage.

This doesn't stop them making sense, it's just the reason behind the decision to be vague on things like speed and distance.  The speeds and distances can still be consistent but telling people the specific details just adds an extra thing to keep track of that doesn't add anything to the story.  You then often end up with people trying to fill in the blanks (or pick holes) but none of that forces the story to not make sense or even to have to explain itself.

If there are possible answers and/or not enough information then we can't prove that it's wrong.

Modifié par Smeelia, 20 juin 2011 - 03:43 .

[Dexi]

Why did Hitler initiate Operation Barbarossa?

Hm...


PLOTHOLE!


Japan attacking Pearl Harbor causing America to enter the war and ensuring the victory for the Allies... Why Japan, why?

PLOTHOLE! THAT'S WHY!

[Whatever42]

Dexi wrote...

Why did Hitler initiate Operation Barbarossa?

Hm...


PLOTHOLE!


Japan attacking Pearl Harbor causing America to enter the war and ensuring the victory for the Allies... Why Japan, why?

PLOTHOLE! THAT'S WHY!

I liked that WWII plothole analysis that guy did a few years back. The WWII writers were clearly pretty awful.

[Veex]

Dexi wrote...

Why did Hitler initiate Operation Barbarossa?

Hm...


PLOTHOLE!


Japan attacking Pearl Harbor causing America to enter the war and ensuring the victory for the Allies... Why Japan, why?

PLOTHOLE! THAT'S WHY!

Aye, way too much reductionist criticism via hindsight in the OP. The Reapers have, to the best of our knowledge, executed this same plan flawlessly for untold generations. Infiltrate the Citadel, access all information on galactic civilization and destroy prominent political figures, harvest everything.

Why would Sovereign use a backup plan if he'd never had to in the past? Because he fails, duh!

[JayhartRIC]

strive wrote...

I find doing Virmire after Noveria more of a plot hole than this. I don't even believe this is a plot hole.

Yea, that didn't make sense to me either.  Saren already had everything he needed.  He should have already been on the way to Ilos.  I just don't go to the missions in that order anymore.

[the_one_54321]

Smeelia wrote...
This doesn't stop them making sense, it's just the reason behind the decision to be vague on things like speed and distance.

Being vague is just fine. That's not a plot hole, it's just a lack of detailed information. But the post I quoted suggested that these elements are deliberately inconsistent. There's a big difference between deliberate inconsistencies and a lack of detailed information.

[Whatever42]

JayhartRIC wrote...

strive wrote...

I find doing Virmire after Noveria more of a plot hole than this. I don't even believe this is a plot hole.

Yea, that didn't make sense to me either.  Saren already had everything he needed.  He should have already been on the way to Ilos.  I just don't go to the missions in that order anymore.

Well, Saren should have just blown up the beacon on Eden Prime. Why blow up the whole dock, when there is nothing of value there other than the beacon? Just point your gun at beacon and pull the trigger. And why keep the second beacon around, especially after Shepard used the first beacon and you know he's following you around? Well, its because Saren is a bit of a comic book villain, who just doesn't shoot people but puts them into an easily escapable death-trap.

[Kais Endac]

Doing Virmire after noveria might not be a plot hole because the facility had two purposes one to breed an army of krogan the other to study indoctrination which i should imagine Saren wanted to avoid. Personally i would hold back going to the conduit in favour of developing a cure or immunity to being brain washed after all you are going to unleash thousands of machines capable of indoctrinating you.
 When you destroy the facility and implant dout into saren you accelerate his plans

Modifié par Kais Endac, 20 juin 2011 - 04:07 .

[Smeelia]

the_one_54321 wrote...

Smeelia wrote...
This doesn't stop them making sense, it's just the reason behind the decision to be vague on things like speed and distance.

Being vague is just fine. That's not a plot hole, it's just a lack of detailed information. But the post I quoted suggested that these elements are deliberately inconsistent. There's a big difference between deliberate inconsistencies and a lack of detailed information.

I think you're misinterpreting it then.  I've seen Babylon 5 and watched it with the commentary (the "speed of plot" is discussed) and it's pretty clear that the meaning is that the writer preferred to leave things vague to avoid inconsistencies rather than be too picky about giving precise details of everything and risk inconsistencies.  I don't think there'd be too many writers making deliberate inconsistencies that create plot holes since those are generally considered a failure in writing (unless they've got some reason like drawing publicity and attention, people watching for plot holes are at least watching).

Whatever666343431431654324 wrote...

Well, Saren should have just blown up the beacon on Eden Prime. Why blow up the whole dock, when there is nothing of value there other than the beacon? Just point your gun at beacon and pull the trigger. And why keep the second beacon around, especially after Shepard used the first beacon and you know he's following you around? Well, its because Saren is a bit of a comic book villain, who just doesn't shoot people but puts them into an easily escapable death-trap.

You could argue that anything that seems like a poor decision made by Saren could be arising from his desire to resist the Reapers rather than from actual stupidity.  In terms of destroying the beacon, it may not have been that easy and he may have only destroyed it as a last resort (similarly, he probably kept the other beacon in his heavily guarded base so that he could study it and maybe find a way out or some other useful information).

Modifié par Smeelia, 20 juin 2011 - 04:24 .

[nicethugbert]

The reapers are lazy, possibly bored. What else do you expect from some one who hibernates for 49.5 thousand years?

[Ahglock]

I suspect they waited to conserve energy, I also suspect that them having to blow X amount of energy just flying here is a big reason for why they can be defeated this time. Less energy for shields etc.

Also on a side note, Life has plot holes like this. If you were to look at a variety of historical engagements but have them written as fiction you would find plenty of "plot holes" like this.

[nicethugbert]

Yeah, but, I think 49.5k years would be better spent developing even better tech or anything more "constructive" than just sleeping. I guess the reapers aren't as sapient as they present themselves as. They're just a bunch of geriatric machines, stuck in a rut. Unless they simply figured out that this is as good as it gets in this universe.

[Therefore_I_Am]

nicethugbert wrote...

Yeah, but, I think 49.5k years would be better spent developing even better tech or anything more "constructive" than just sleeping. I guess the reapers aren't as sapient as they present themselves as. They're just a bunch of geriatric machines, stuck in a rut. Unless they simply figured out that this is as good as it gets in this universe.

They are space Cthulhus, and therefore are suppose to act like space Cthulhus.

[Bungie.Net Sucks]

This is still going.

Wat

[PnXMarcin1PL]

We have no idea, if the Reapers have alternate way to get into the galaxy. e.g. mass relays leading from their base to milky way galaxy, lets say 10-20 of them.

[MightySword]

there are a lot of "convience" things in the story, every stories have it. What has been stated so far can be considered as such, things happens a certain way to create the story however nothing so far is as big as a plothole yet, and frankly, not the biggest plot hole ever.

There are several other "convience" aspect of the game that I'm not buy atm:

- The erradication of the Prothean was "too perfect". As the only space fairing race it makes sense for them to place their seat of power on the Citidel, making it their capitol or w/e. So it made sense for the striket at the citidel incured the damage it did, but look at the current citidel/council ...

- It strikes me the current council is more or less the soup up version of the real life United Nation. So you have influencial figures on it and some peace amount of force (probably more than the token force our UN have), sure it is the central hub of galactic civilization, but it's nowhere near the "head". Killing Udina or Anderson is hardly cutting of the head of the Alliance, and I doubt the Vasari/Turian/Salarian counterpart were also the head of their race. And the non-council rate only have an ambassador on the citidel. The real power still lie at each race capital world it seems. not to mention the abundant number of non-council rate. So even if the original plan was successful, I doubt they achieved the kind of effect they had.

- Another thing I don't buy. So ... sure, you can say with the relay cut off they seperate all the world/colony for take down, and even with all the data from the citidel it still took a few centuries ... for FTL space faring species ... how long is a few centuries? Even without the relays there is still FTL travel, and even just for a single century, the possible radius of expansion would create and impossible large radius of search for new colonies/splinter groups that possibly happen during the cunning. Unless each and every colonies was just sitting there staring at space for a few centuries for their turn of being put on the plate.


convience elements can be introduced on purpose to simplified the story without covering every single possible possibilities. If they're are used badly they become plot hole, however some of them might not be plot hole, but rather just bad writing. So far what I see in ME story is more akin to Death Star and Endor in Starwar - bad lolz - but they're not plothole ... yet.

Modifié par MightySword, 20 juin 2011 - 11:23 .